Renaissance
by Siskin
Summary: Part 2 of Reincarnation Arc. SPOILERS to the series! If you haven't finished it, do that first! Hotohori's been reborn in Miaka's world as an ordinary young man with an ordinary life, but things are about to change.


Disclaimer: I'm only borrowing Fushigi Yuugi and the associated characters, and I promise I'll put them back where I found them when I'm done.

Renaissance

Everything was very, very bright when I opened my eyes. I squinted, and as soon as I did, my head started to throb so hard I moaned out loud.

"Oh, my god! I'm sorry! Are you okay?"

I could feel blood trickling from the side of my head, but I couldn't seem to open my mouth and speak. I was lying on a cold, hard floor, and people were standing all around me, their faces looking very far away. From the corner of my eye, I saw someone crouch and felt pressure applied to the cut on my head, producing such a quick slice of pain that I snapped my eyes shut again. Something was also very wrong with my right shoulder, but it didn't hurt very badly yet.

Someone was slapping my cheek, and reluctantly I opened my eyes again. A man was crouching over me, practically shouting into my face. "What's your name, son? Tell me what your name is!"

"Saihitei," I mumbled. There was a murmur from the people above me that I was too disoriented to decipher. My vision was starting to clear, and nearby I saw a contrite-looking boy pulling a fallen ladder upright to lean against a high shelf.

"How many fingers am I holding up?"

I looked again. "Three." In the distance I could hear the wail of an ambulance siren. The sound seemed to clear my head. I remembered climbing that ladder after an item for a customer. I didn't remember falling at all.

"We've got an ambulance coming right now. You'll be all right. Just hold on." Someone spread a blanket over me and I felt a rolled towel pushed under my neck.

"Did I fall?" I mumbled.

"Yes, off the ladder," said the man kneeling by my side. He was Nobuyuki, the manager. The connections in my brain were starting to work again, despite the way my head was throbbing. The stock boy, a little mousy high school kid named Takashi, was standing on the sidelines and wringing his hands like a worried wife. Nobuyuki looked over at a knot of timid but curious employees who were lurking nearby. "Himiko, go with Karuko to the hospital and make sure he gets home all right when they release him."

"Yes, sir!" She came over to me, kneeling on the other side of me. She was about my age, but she seemed shy, and usually avoided me.

The ambulance arrived, and the medics loaded me on and carted me off to the hospital. Himiko rode in the back with me, saying nothing for most of the trip, and I spent the ride watching her to try and distract myself from the pain of my head, which was diminishing, and the pain in my shoulder, which was increasing. She kept her gaze directed out the window.

The medics, like Nobuyuki-san, asked me my name. "His name is Karuko," Himiko piped up before I could respond.

One of the medics gave her an exasperated look. "The idea is for _him_ to answer, so we know if he's still coherent, miss," he pointed out, and she wilted.

I didn't need any stitches, and they merely put a couple of butterfly closures on the cut after cleaning it up; but I did have a head concussion, and my shoulder had been wrenched in the fall. Afterward, they gave me some pain medication and settled me on a cot to rest. Himiko sat nearby in a chair and kept quiet, and I was grateful for that. I closed my eyes and tried to sleep in spite of the dull pounding in my head and shoulder.

"Karuko?"

Pulled back from the brink of a restless doze, I opened my eyes and looked over at Himiko somewhat irritably. "What is it?"

She flinched a little at my tone, but spoke again. "Who's Saihitei?"

"I don't know. Why?"

"You said your name was Saihitei."

I blinked. "When did I say that?"

"When Nobuyuki asked you, after you fell. That's why I told the medics what your name was—because you said the wrong name before."

I didn't remember saying it at all. "I don't know anyone with that name. I must've heard it on television or something." I closed my eyes again. "I got a concussion—it's not any surprise my brains were scrambled." 

"Mmm." She hesitated. "Do you need anything, Karuko?"

"No, just to rest."

She took the hint, and lapsed into silence. The medication was starting to kick in, and I surrendered gratefully.

---

"_Highness, you mustn't worry. She will be all right with her warriors protecting her."_

"_How can I help it? I should be there with them, protecting her as well." Plush softness under my arm. Not a cushion. Something in my hand—a picture. I can hardly see it, as much as I squint. Shapes are all that I can see. It can't be faded already—it was just taken a few days ago, wasn't it? On the ship, before she left. She's the one in the picture, there, in the front. The woman I dreamed of. She… her name… how silly of me, I've forgotten it! It's on the very tip of my tongue…if I could just see her face in the picture, I could…_

"_You have the welfare of the entire kingdom to think of, sire. The others can protect the Priestess, and you did give her your sword." _

"_Yes… I will go to the shrine and pray for her." I rise, clutching the soft thing under my arm, a familiar shape I can't quite place, tucking the photograph away carefully. I walk down the halls, so intimately familiar to me, push open a set of doors…_

_Bright light. I'm outdoors? That wasn't the way to the shrine… how ridiculous, getting so absorbed in thought that I get lost in my own palace… Where did I miss a turning?_

"_Your Highness, come back!"_

_Too bright. I can't even see where I came from, much less turn back—what do I do now?_

"_Your Highness! Don't go!"_

_Don't go? I'm not going anywhere!_

"_Don't go! Don't go!"_

---

"Karuko!"

I blinked and stumbled, feeling my heels on solid ground and my toes in midair. I flailed, and when finally my hands found something solid, I grabbed it and hung on for dear life. The world around me flared into brightness. I was standing in a sunny hospital corridor on the edge of the top step of a stairway, clinging to the handrail.

An orderly was shambling toward me quickly. "I don't think you should be going anywhere, young man," he said, taking my arm and gently pulling me away from the stairs. On my other side, I saw Himiko holding my other arm, her eyes wide with alarm.

I still felt groggy, though the pain in my head and shoulder had waned. The details of the dream had already drained away. All I remembered was wandering in the dark, lost. "What's going on?"

"You were sleepwalking!" Himiko exclaimed, as the orderly started to guide me back down the hall. "It was creepy! I told you to lie back down, but you couldn't hear me!"

"I've never sleepwalked," I mumbled, as the orderly sat me back down on my cot and checked my pulse and blood pressure.

"Well, you have now," he said dryly. "Must've been some dream. Maybe your system didn't like those pain pills very much. I'll see if I can get something different to give you. Don't go anywhere," he added with a grin, patting me on the arm as he removed the blood pressure cuff and headed off down the hall again.

I rubbed my sore head tentatively. I felt vaguely dizzy, but I didn't want to lie down again. I certainly didn't intend to stand up.

Himiko had reclaimed her chair, but she watched me with something akin to fascination. "Are you sure you'll be okay going home tonight, Karuko? Maybe you should stay here overnight."

"I'd rather not. I don't like hospitals."

"Why?"

I shrugged. "I just don't."

I expected her to shrink back at that, but she only nodded. I looked at her. Her manner seemed different to me. Normally she would avoid my eyes, but now she looked directly back at me.

"Do you remember what you were dreaming about?" she asked me.

Something flickered in my mind, and then died. I shook my head. "I just remember walking around lost—maybe I wasn't all the way asleep, because that's pretty much what I was doing."

"But you said something."

I looked at her. "Oh?" She nodded.

"What did I say?"

This time, she blushed, finally averting her eyes. "Before you got up, you said, 'The woman I dreamed of.'"

The phrase brought back memories of the dream with startling clarity—the feel of the photograph in my hand; the soft thing, whatever it was, under my arm; the voice of someone speaking to me, although the details of the conversation in the dream were still lost to me. And the thought of the girl. Suddenly Himiko's change in manner made sense to me: maybe she thought—or hoped—that I had been dreaming of _her_.

"There was a girl in my dream," I said slowly. "Well, not in it, but I was thinking about her. I think I was looking for her. I had a picture of her." I looked down at my right hand, still almost able to feel the corners of the picture that I couldn't see.

I knew Himiko was hoping for confirmation that the girl in my dream was herself; but as plausible as it was, I also knew that the girl in my dream was someone else. I had no mental image of her, no impression of her face or her voice or anything about her, except that, in the dream, I had been searching for her.

I made myself laugh. "Probably my kindergarten sweetheart or someone else I haven't seen in years," I joked, as gently as I could, without looking at Himiko. I lay back down on the cot. I heard no sound from her. I closed my eyes.

I slept without dreams throughout most of the afternoon, finally waking up to see the sunlight coming through the window at an early evening angle. My head and shoulder still throbbed, but I was groggy in the way one becomes after sleeping off-schedule, rather than from the pain pills. Himiko was still there, reading a magazine, but she called for an orderly when I woke up and asked for a drink of water. Apparently she wasn't taking any chances that I might wander off in my sleep again.

"You sound like your head's clear," the doctor concluded, after asking me a few questions and checking the state of my injuries. "I think you're ready to go home, but you should stay home from work tomorrow, if not longer, and you definitely shouldn't do any heavy lifting or carrying for two weeks."

Himiko escorted me out of the hospital and home on the train, but she was distant, staring out the window. I passed the time looking out the window on the opposite side and at the people on the train, thinking ahead to what I needed to do when I got home. There wasn't much. I lived alone, having moved to a small apartment when I finished high school and got the job at the store. Even though I liked to read and research, I hadn't really cared to go on to a university. I worked, went out with friends once in a while, and overall I was my own person. I liked it.

I didn't go out on dates very often. My friends made frequent fusses over this. They had set me up several times, and although the dates had been fun, no relationship had lasted beyond a few outings. They had gone through a phase of teasing me about being gay, and had even gone as far as to set me up with a nice young man of that persuasion; but he hadn't lasted any longer than any of their other "prospects", and my friends finally had to resign themselves to the idea that I was simply solitary.

It occurred to me, then, to wonder about the meaning of my dream. Why dream about a nameless, faceless girl? Did it mean that I had such a high ideal for a woman that no real woman could measure up? The more I mulled over it, the more came back to me—not details or images, but emotions, related to the girl in my dream. Intense, almost overwhelming longing. A primal feeling of protectiveness. And underlying it, a font of sadness held in check.

I was so absorbed in analysis that it took me a moment to feel Himiko pulling on my good arm and to realize that the train had stopped. "Karuko, c'mon, here's your stop," she was saying impatiently. Obediently I got up and followed her.

She walked me to my building, and I got out my key and unlocked the front door. I looked down at her, standing at the bottom of the steps. "Thank you, Himiko," I said quietly. As she looked up, startled, I stepped into the building and closed the door behind me.

---

_I was on horseback, in the heat of summer, the sun beating down on me; I smelled water, and grass, and metal, and blood. There was a battle; I could hear swords clashing against shields, cries of wounded men. I was aware of all this, but my conscious attention was focused forward, on the warrior before me, the blonde, blue-eyed man who was the source of the loathing I felt, that was twisting my face in hatred and making me grip my sword and itch to use it. _

_He was not smiling, but his eyes glittered with contempt of me. Whatever he had said just an instant ago, it had goaded me to bloodlust, and that pleased him. It pleased him immensely. _

_It could no longer be endured. I screamed out a challenge, hearing the words ring out but not comprehending what I said, and viciously spurred my horse forward, my sword lifting, as if stretching out in eagerness to find the man's heart—_

_The instant I saw the cold blue light spring to life around him, I knew my mistake, but it was too late. The light enveloped me, bringing pain with it, and I left my horse's back as if I were weightless, hanging in midair for an excruciating moment, until I crashed to the ground and the breath exploded from my chest. I felt bones break, blood and life trickling from me. _

_Time passed. The blonde man was gone. The battle continued, the sounds distant and unimportant. There were familiar faces near me now, friendly voices speaking in frightened, grieved tones. _

_And then I heard her voice, coming from nowhere and everywhere, calling out to me—and if I had had the strength, I would have wept. With the last breath I could muster, fighting the pain to stay aware, I confessed and begged her forgiveness. I had failed her. I had not stopped him. He was coming. I was dying, I could not protect her from him—he would destroy—_

---

I woke, choking for breath. I was on the floor, my entire shoulder and arm pounding with pain, my stomach rolling alarmingly. I struggled to my knees, then to my feet, and staggered across the room, barely making it to the bathroom before the contents of my stomach came up.

When my body finally stopped heaving, I fumbled open the bottle the doctor had sent home with me and numbly swallowed a tablet, then simply sank down on my knees, unwilling to go back in the bedroom. I was covered with sweat, my hair plastered against my skin, and unlike the last one, the details of this dream were still frighteningly clear.

_The man with blonde hair… and the woman… he was going to kill her…the battle in the background…what movie did I get all that from? _I tried to laugh, but it came out as a feeble squeak. _Take it easy, Karuko. It was just a dream. You hit your head and it's grabbing things from your memory and mixing mental mai tais for you. That's all._

It should have felt true, but it didn't.

I jumped as I heard a knock at my door. I pushed myself up, hoping my shaky knees would support me, and grabbed a robe, getting halfway tangled in it before I managed to get my arms in the proper sleeves. I made my way warily to the door, keeping close to the wall in case my legs decided they didn't feel like supporting me after all. The clock on the table said it was just after four a.m.

"Karuko?" a soft, rusty voice was calling nervously through the door. "Are you all right? I thought I heard you fall…"

I almost giggled in relief. It was only my landlady. She lived right next door, and Nobuyuki had called her to let her know of my condition. She had mothered me half to death before letting me go to bed last night. I had to clear my throat before I could speak. "I'm all right, Mrs. Kasama," I croaked, my voice still hoarse.

"Do you need anything?"

"No, I'm fine. I'm going back to sleep now."

"All right, dear. Just call me if you do." I heard her shuffle back down the hall.

I sighed and sank down on my knees on a mat at the table, burying my head in my hands.

"_Hotohori!"_

I stiffened, my head jerking up. The sudden movement made my head spin dangerously, and I gripped the edge of the table so hard my fingers went white.

Hotohori. That was the name she had called me in my dream. And I had almost remembered hers. I had been on the brink of saying it when I had awakened. It lingered just beyond the reach of my memory.

I dug the nails of my left hand into my right wrist and shook my head slowly. _Reality check, "Hotohori". She doesn't even HAVE a name. She's a figment of your subconscious. She is NOT REAL._

_Oh, yes, she is,_ whispered another part of me as I lay down on the couch to finish the night. _And you have to find her before it's too late!_

"Too late for what?" I mumbled. And fell asleep.

--

"Oh, come on, man!"

I sighed. "I don't feel like it, Toshio," I said, for the third or fourth time. "You guys are perfectly capable of going out, getting drunk, and picking up girls on your own. You're big boys."

"But it's easier with you along!" Mikio called out in the background. "You're our bait!"

I snorted. "Thanks a lot, Mikio." Since I never "picked up" girls, despite the fact that they seemed to gravitate to me, Mikio and Toshio usually got the "leftovers"—the ones that gave up on me. They didn't mind. Neither did I, really; but tonight I simply didn't feel like hanging about in the smoke and deafening music and the smell of beer, especially since my head still throbbed dangerously if I went too long without sitting down. After taking one day off, I'd gone back to work on Wednesday, over the strenuous protests of my boss; but as he'd insisted, I'd tried to take it easy. Now it was Friday, and all I really felt like doing was taking a hot shower and going to bed early.

I certainly didn't feel like staying on the phone any longer, but Toshio continued to cajole. "Come on, just this once?"

"I said no," I snapped.

There was a startled silence on the other end of the line, and I was no less surprised myself. "Shit, man, just how hard did you hit your head?"

"I'm sorry," I said quickly. "I'm just tired."

There was a brief exchange of insults and scuffling over the receiver on the other end, and then Mikio's lower, smoother voice replaced Toshio's. "Hey, don't worry about it, Karu," he said. "Just get some rest. We don't want you keeling over on us. After I get Toshio drunk and shacked up I'll come check on you, okay?"

I smiled. "Okay, but you don't have to do that."

"Hey, even with a head injury you're better company than this drunk!"

"Hey!" Toshio howled.

Mikio was laughing, and I mustered a chuckle. "But seriously, you sound funny, Karu. I just want to make sure you're all right, you know?"

"Yeah. I'll leave the door unlocked."

"Okay. See you later tonight."

"Bye."

---

I was half-asleep on the couch a few hours later when Mikio knocked quietly and then came in. "How the hell do you keep this place so neat?" he asked as he took his shoes off.

"I don't have much stuff, and I don't live with Toshio."

Mikio laughed. "You have a point there." He came over and peered at the cut on my head, surrounded by a quite colorful bruise. "Ouch."

"Very ouch," I agreed.

"Nasty, but it looks like it's healing all right. How far did you fall?"

"About eight feet. I hit a shelf."

"I'm sure the shelf's doing better than you are. I assume you haven't been back to the doctor about it?"

Mikio knew me, all right. "Nope."

"You should."

"I know. Want a drink?"

"Sure. I'll get it," he added quickly, before I could get up, and went to the kitchen himself.

He came back with an opened soda and an ice pack, and handed the latter to me. Obediently I put it on the cut, wincing. "How's the shoulder?" he asked me.

"Okay. I couldn't have lifted anything at work if I'd wanted to. Which I didn't."

"Wise of you." He studied me a moment. "Have you been sleeping all right?"

I hesitated, but that was answer enough for him.

"I didn't think so. What's up?"

"I've been having really weird dreams," I said cautiously.

"About what?"

"This girl." I saw his lip twitch, and I scowled at him. "Not _that _kind of dreams."

"I can't help having a sick mind. I live with Toshio. Okay, okay, I'm serious. What kind of dreams, then? Who is she?"

"I don't know. It's as if she's someone I knew. When I say the dreams are weird, I mean _really_ weird. It's like I've been searching for this girl, like she's in some kind of danger. Someone's going to kill her. And I dreamed that I was dying, and I hadn't saved her." I kept my face averted, knowing how laughable it sounded.

"You don't know her name?"

I shook my head, clenching a fist. "No. I heard her voice. But I never saw her face, and I couldn't think of her name. I had a picture of her, but I couldn't see it."

_You are flipping out, Karu, _a part of my mind informed me. _You know that, don't you?_

"And she called me by a different name. Hotohori."

"Hotohori—that's one of the constellations in Chinese astrology, isn't it? The sea snake?"

My heart started to pound, though I didn't know why. "I wouldn't know. I don't know Chinese astrology. What are the other ones?"

"I don't remember them all. There're twenty-eight… Hotohori, Chichiri, Tamahome…Suboshi and Amiboshi, I remember those… Ashitare…"

My heart seemed to seize up, and I clenched my fists. Almost all those names were familiar. I'd never heard them before, but I knew them. "Mitsukake," I mumbled. "Tasuki." Mikio was staring at me. "Nuriko. Chiriko. Miboshi. Soi. Tomo. Nakago."

_Nakago._

_The blue light. The battle. The blonde man. Nakago. His name was Nakago. _

"_You will not defile Miaka's world!"_

_Miaka.  
The woman._

_Miaka Yuki._

Mikio was shaking me. "Karu, snap out of it! Are you all right? Say something!"

"Miaka," I mumbled. "Her name was Miaka. My name was Saihitei, but they called me Hotohori because …" It was fading. But I had the woman's name. Nothing else mattered.

"Who is Nakago? That was the name that made you freeze up."

"The man in my dream, the one who killed me. He was called Nakago." Suddenly my head was throbbing worse than ever, and I leaned my head heavily on my hands.

I barely felt Mikio help me lie down on the sofa. My mind wouldn't stay on any one thought. I remembered things. Disconnected scraps of memory ricocheted in my mind. Being called "Your Highness." Being called "Your Majesty". _The first dream. The man telling me not to worry. He called me "Your Majesty."_ The others. The warriors that were protecting Miaka. They were all named after constellations, like me. The painfully high-pitched, frenetic music of a flute. Sitting on a bed, holding someone in my arms. _Miaka. _I knew it was she. Out in a palace courtyard, gripping my sword as it drove into someone's body, and Miaka's voice screaming something over and over. The gentle melody of a leaf whistle. And, finally, I saw her, but I could not see her face, only her outline, and everything was fading away, but I knew it was really myself fading. I was only a spirit.

---

I hope I never have that high a fever again.

Mikio told me later he almost called an ambulance. It took him hours to lower my temperature to where I no longer moaned and spoke gibberish in my fever daze.

I spent the rest of the night lost in some demon's playground between memory and reality, in which I battled my employer dressed in cruel-looking armor, worked in the store with a young man of astonishing beauty, fought alongside Toshio as he seemed to fling bolts of fire, took my high school fencing classes with a cocky, money-grubbing youth, and wept over Mikio's bloodstained body lying in the snow.

I woke up around one o'clock Saturday afternoon with a headache and a purpose. I kept quiet while Mikio called a friend in medical school to make sure he didn't need to take me to the emergency room and then pushed painkillers and large amounts of water on me. I dozed on and off until Mikio woke me for dinner before he went home.

I broke it to him at my tiny kitchen table after I'd filled up on soup and crackers (I wasn't sure whether to trust my stomach with anything else.) "I'm going," I said, and Mikio looked up. "I'm going to go find this girl, before I go out of my mind."

"Karu, are you sure you want to do this?" Mikio finally asked me. "I mean, even if she's real, and even if you find her, how do you know she'll know who _you_ are? How do you know she even _wants_ you to find her?"

I was quiet for a minute. How, indeed, did I know? "I'll just go and see her. I won't let her see me."

Mikio hesitated, and then sighed. "All right, this is your show. But I'm going with you."

"What? Why?"

"Moral support. Besides, you're acting weirder all the time, and if she flips out on you, or you flip out on her, somebody's got to be there to straighten things out, right?" He poked me.

The idea was quickly gaining more appeal for me. I realized I didn't want to be alone in this. It was a feeling I wasn't accustomed to. "All right."

---

The car ride out to Tokyo was painfully slow. There was nothing to do but stare out the window and wonder what was going to happen. I had her name and address on a slip of paper in my pocket, and I kept taking it out to look at it again, even though I already had it memorized.

"Calm down," Mikio said, without having to look at me. "Either she'll be the person you think she is, or she won't. Either way, everything's fine."

We expected to get into Tokyo about three o'clock in the afternoon, but an unexpected traffic jam kept us on the highway, so we wound up not getting there until four-thirty. Within a half hour, we were parked near the home of Miaka Yuki.

I looked up at the building. "Do you know which window is hers?" Mikio asked me. I shook my head. Mikio sighed and hunkered down in the driver's seat. "Well, we can wait a while."

---

I ended up making him wait until nearly seven o'clock, but no one I recognized went in or out of the building. Mikio finally talked me into leaving to get a bite to eat, and to get to the gas station to fill up before we left. "We've got to get back, Karu. I've got work tomorrow."

I got out of the car with him at the gas station, and stayed out when he came back to the car. My head was aching. "You go on back. I'll come home on the train. I've got enough money."

He stared at me and shook his head. "Karu, come on. It's late." He opened the car door.

"I'm not ready to give up yet."

"I don't want to leave you here by yourself, Karuko. Get in the car."

"Why? Don't you trust me?"

He sighed. "I know this is important to you, but it's more important that you rest, and you're not going to get any rest wandering around Tokyo looking for this girl. I won't force you, but I'd rather you came back with me."

"No."

"Fine, then. But promise me you'll call me tomorrow. Whether you find her or not. Please?"

His expression of resigned worry pricked at my conscience, but I shook it off with a brief nod. "All right. I will."

He gave me a long look, and then nodded. "Okay. Good luck, Karuko."

"Thanks." I watched him pull out and drive away.

I sighed and sank down on a bench, leaning my throbbing head in my hands. I couldn't think of anything to do except go back to the building and knock on her door. But Mikio's warning kept echoing in my head. _"How do you know she even wants you to find her?"_

I heard a pair of laughing voices, and looked up. A young man and a girl had pulled into the gas station in a little convertible. As he hopped out to fill up the tank, the girl ran into the store, waving. "I'll be right back, Ryuen!"

He called to her, in a surprisingly light and clear voice, "Don't buy too much food, or we won't have enough money left to pay for the gas!"

"I won't!"

He chuckled and went about fueling up the car. He was a very good-looking young man, strong but slender, with a free, easy grace to his movements. His hair was in many layers reaching about chin-length, and fell in tapered waves across his forehead. As he straightened up, his eyes fell on me, and he blinked and stared for a moment. He shook his head slightly as if to clear it, and then looked over his shoulder as the girl came out carrying a full bag in each hand. The young man groaned in exasperation. "Miaka—"

I sat bolt upright on the bench, and then I was on my feet without thinking. The girl half-turned as she heard my footsteps, and I saw her face, caught between sheepish amusement and surprise, and it was a face I knew intimately. She started to speak, and then I had her in my arms. The bags in her hands fell to the ground.

I whispered, "Miaka…"

She was stiff for a few instants, but then the sound of my voice sunk in. She pulled back from me, blinking, wide-eyed, and then she'd said what I'd been praying to hear. "Hotohori? Is…that you?"

The young man had started toward us in alarm when I'd embraced Miaka, but as Miaka spoke, he stood back with an astonished face, and then broke out in a laugh. "Well, I'll be damned!"

Just then, my head told me in no uncertain terms that it wanted me lying down. Right now. My knees started to buckle and my vision swam, and I let go of Miaka so I wouldn't pull her down with me.

Then I had a strong shoulder supporting me, and an arm securely around my waist. "Hmph. You obviously haven't been taking very good care of yourself, have you, Your Highness?" Nuriko reproached me, although his tone was compassionate.

"C'mon, over here." Miaka took my arm on my other side, looking concerned, and they walked me back over to the bench.

Miaka found the healing cut and bruise on my temple and winced aloud. "Hotohori, what happened to you?"

"It's nothing. I fell." I looked at her and smiled, and she smiled back. "I suppose it was a good thing. It wasn't until it happened that I remembered anything."

"That's a rotten way to have to get your memory back," Nuriko remarked, rubbing his head. He looked at Miaka. "Well, now what?"

"Where do you live now, Hotohori?" Miaka asked me.

"I live in Yokohama. And my name is Karuko now. Have you found any of the others?"

Miaka nodded enthusiastically. "Tamahome's here, of course, and a few months ago we found Chiriko! His family moved in a few blocks away!"

I smiled. "It will be good to see him again. And you, Nuriko? How did you remember?"

Nuriko laughed. "I guess I was lucky. My parents are Japanese, but they were living in China when I was born, and I grew up there. I started remembering things when I was just a little kid, like Taka did—I've even been to visit. I was always telling my parents these wild stories about how I was so strong I could pick up giant rocks, but of course it never worked when I tried." Nuriko looked ruefully at his wrists. "Too bad I had to leave those cool bracelets back in the Universe of the Four Gods, huh?"

"Let's go back to our place and talk! We can call Chiriko and he can come over, too!" Miaka exclaimed.

So, after Nuriko paid for the gas, we were off in his car, with Miaka squeezed in the middle and chattering away a mile a minute, occasionally interrupted by Nuriko.

"I notice you have the same name as you did before, Nuriko," I commented to him.

"You mean Ryuen? Yup. Just a really bizarre coincidence, I guess. It's helped that we seem to look a lot like we used to, too. Well, except for Chiriko!" he began to laugh.

"What's so funny?"

"Chiriko is older! He's not a kid here," Miaka told me. "He's almost the same age as me!"

"Still a smart kid, though," Nuriko added. "He's a year younger than Miaka, and he graduates from high school next year."

We chattered all the way back to Miaka's apartment—or, at least, Miaka and Nuriko chattered, and I soaked it in, listening and smiling.

Somehow I had a feeling this was the end of my quiet, solitary life.

Somehow I didn't mind.


End file.
